1.
Perdicula erythrorhyncha
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The painted bush quail is a species of quail found in the hill forests of India. They move in small coveys on hillsides and are distinguished by their red bills and they have a liquid alarm call and small groups will run in single file along paths before taking flight when flushed. This quail is darkish brightly colored with a red bill and legs. The female has brick-red underpart and lacks the throat and head stripe of the male. The male has a face with a white supercilium and throat. These quail are found in a covey of 6 to 10 birds. They come out in open grassy patches or on forest roads and cart tracks to feed, the covey quickly reunites by the constant call of the members to one another. The call consists of runs of soft whistle for rallying the scattered covey, the call is pleasant, oft-repeated triple note kirikee-kirikee-kirikee, by the cock in breeding season. It is 6. 6–7.5 in in length and weighs roughly 2. 4–3.1 oz This species is found in the hill forests. There are two disjunct populations. Subspecies blewitti is found in the Satpuras and extends into the northern Eastern Ghats and this is smaller and paler than the nominate subspecies of the Western Ghats, the Nilgiris and hills of southern India including the Biligirirangans and Shevaroys. These quails are usually seen in groups of 8 to 10. When flushed they scatter in different directions and then begin rally calling to reunite, males are believed to be monogynous. They are pugnacious and trappers are known to use decoy males to capture others, the call of the breeding male is a kirkee. kirkee and other calls include soft whistles which rises and falls in pitch. The nesting season varies locally, but is said to breed mainly in December to March, nests are typically found in the ground at the root of a bush or grass clump, sometimes thinly lined with grass. The female lays 4 to 7 eggs at a time, which are incubated by the female alone for 16–18 days before hatching, females are said to defend their young often by attacking dogs and even humans that intrude. Chicks are said to be able to fly at an early age

2.
Taxonomy (biology)
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Taxonomy is the science of defining groups of biological organisms on the basis of shared characteristics and giving names to those groups. The exact definition of taxonomy varies from source to source, but the core of the remains, the conception, naming. There is some disagreement as to whether biological nomenclature is considered a part of taxonomy, the broadest meaning of taxonomy is used here. The word taxonomy was introduced in 1813 by Candolle, in his Théorie élémentaire de la botanique, the term alpha taxonomy is primarily used today to refer to the discipline of finding, describing, and naming taxa, particularly species. In earlier literature, the term had a different meaning, referring to morphological taxonomy, ideals can, it may be said, never be completely realized. They have, however, a value of acting as permanent stimulants. Some of us please ourselves by thinking we are now groping in a beta taxonomy, turrill thus explicitly excludes from alpha taxonomy various areas of study that he includes within taxonomy as a whole, such as ecology, physiology, genetics, and cytology. He further excludes phylogenetic reconstruction from alpha taxonomy, thus, Ernst Mayr in 1968 defined beta taxonomy as the classification of ranks higher than species. This activity is what the term denotes, it is also referred to as beta taxonomy. How species should be defined in a group of organisms gives rise to practical and theoretical problems that are referred to as the species problem. The scientific work of deciding how to define species has been called microtaxonomy, by extension, macrotaxonomy is the study of groups at higher taxonomic ranks, from subgenus and above only, than species. While some descriptions of taxonomic history attempt to date taxonomy to ancient civilizations, earlier works were primarily descriptive, and focused on plants that were useful in agriculture or medicine. There are a number of stages in scientific thinking. Early taxonomy was based on criteria, the so-called artificial systems. Later came systems based on a complete consideration of the characteristics of taxa, referred to as natural systems, such as those of de Jussieu, de Candolle and Bentham. The publication of Charles Darwins Origin of Species led to new ways of thinking about classification based on evolutionary relationships and this was the concept of phyletic systems, from 1883 onwards. This approach was typified by those of Eichler and Engler, the advent of molecular genetics and statistical methodology allowed the creation of the modern era of phylogenetic systems based on cladistics, rather than morphology alone. Taxonomy has been called the worlds oldest profession, and naming and classifying our surroundings has likely been taking place as long as mankind has been able to communicate

3.
Animal
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Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia. The animal kingdom emerged as a clade within Apoikozoa as the group to the choanoflagellates. Animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and independently at some point in their lives and their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later in their lives. All animals are heterotrophs, they must ingest other organisms or their products for sustenance, most known animal phyla appeared in the fossil record as marine species during the Cambrian explosion, about 542 million years ago. Animals can be divided broadly into vertebrates and invertebrates, vertebrates have a backbone or spine, and amount to less than five percent of all described animal species. They include fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, the remaining animals are the invertebrates, which lack a backbone. These include molluscs, arthropods, annelids, nematodes, flatworms, cnidarians, ctenophores, the study of animals is called zoology. The word animal comes from the Latin animalis, meaning having breath, the biological definition of the word refers to all members of the kingdom Animalia, encompassing creatures as diverse as sponges, jellyfish, insects, and humans. Aristotle divided the world between animals and plants, and this was followed by Carl Linnaeus, in the first hierarchical classification. In Linnaeuss original scheme, the animals were one of three kingdoms, divided into the classes of Vermes, Insecta, Pisces, Amphibia, Aves, and Mammalia. Since then the last four have all been subsumed into a single phylum, in 1874, Ernst Haeckel divided the animal kingdom into two subkingdoms, Metazoa and Protozoa. The protozoa were later moved to the kingdom Protista, leaving only the metazoa, thus Metazoa is now considered a synonym of Animalia. Animals have several characteristics that set apart from other living things. Animals are eukaryotic and multicellular, which separates them from bacteria and they are heterotrophic, generally digesting food in an internal chamber, which separates them from plants and algae. They are also distinguished from plants, algae, and fungi by lacking cell walls. All animals are motile, if only at life stages. In most animals, embryos pass through a stage, which is a characteristic exclusive to animals. With a few exceptions, most notably the sponges and Placozoa and these include muscles, which are able to contract and control locomotion, and nerve tissues, which send and process signals

4.
Chordate
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Chordates are deuterostomes, as during the embryo development stage the anus forms before the mouth. They are also bilaterally symmetric coelomates, in the case of vertebrate chordates, the notochord is usually replaced by a vertebral column during development, and they may have body plans organized via segmentation. There are also additional extinct taxa, the Vertebrata are sometimes considered as a subgroup of the clade Craniata, consisting of chordates with a skull, the Craniata and Tunicata compose the clade Olfactores. Of the more than 65,000 living species of chordates, the worlds largest and fastest animals, the blue whale and peregrine falcon respectively, are chordates, as are humans. Fossil chordates are known from at least as early as the Cambrian explosion, Hemichordata, which includes the acorn worms, has been presented as a fourth chordate subphylum, but it now is usually treated as a separate phylum. The Hemichordata, along with the Echinodermata, form the Ambulacraria, the Chordata and Ambulacraria form the superphylum Deuterostomia, composed of the deuterostomes. Attempts to work out the relationships of the chordates have produced several hypotheses. All of the earliest chordate fossils have found in the Early Cambrian Chengjiang fauna. Because the fossil record of early chordates is poor, only molecular phylogenetics offers a prospect of dating their emergence. However, the use of molecular phylogenetics for dating evolutionary transitions is controversial and it has also proved difficult to produce a detailed classification within the living chordates. Attempts to produce family trees shows that many of the traditional classes are paraphyletic. While this has been known since the 19th century, an insistence on only monophyletic taxa has resulted in vertebrate classification being in a state of flux. Although the name Chordata is attributed to William Bateson, it was already in prevalent use by 1880, ernst Haeckel described a taxon comprising tunicates, cephalochordates, and vertebrates in 1866. Though he used the German vernacular form, it is allowed under the ICZN code because of its subsequent latinization, among the vertebrate sub-group of chordates the notochord develops into the spine, and in wholly aquatic species this helps the animal to swim by flexing its tail. In fish and other vertebrates, this develops into the spinal cord, the pharynx is the part of the throat immediately behind the mouth. In fish, the slits are modified to form gills, a muscular tail that extends backwards behind the anus. This is a groove in the wall of the pharynx. In filter-feeding species it produces mucus to gather food particles, which helps in transporting food to the esophagus and it also stores iodine, and may be a precursor of the vertebrate thyroid gland

5.
Bird
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Birds live worldwide and range in size from the 5 cm bee hummingbird to the 2.75 m ostrich. They rank as the class of tetrapods with the most living species, at ten thousand. As a subgroup of Reptilia, birds are the closest living relatives of crocodilians, while birds, the fossil record indicates that birds are also the last surviving representatives of dinosauria, having evolved from feathered ancestors within the theropod group of saurischian dinosaurs. True birds first appeared during the Cretaceous period, around 100 million years ago, dNA-based evidence finds that birds diversified dramatically around the time of the Cretaceous–Palaeogene extinction event which killed off all other dinosaur lineages. Birds, especially those in the continents, survived this event. Primitive bird-like dinosaurs that lie outside class Aves proper, in the broader group Avialae, have been found dating back to the mid-Jurassic period. Birds have wings which are more or less developed depending on the species, the digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have evolved for swimming. Many species annually migrate great distances, Birds are social, communicating with visual signals, calls, and bird songs, and participating in such social behaviours as cooperative breeding and hunting, flocking, and mobbing of predators. The vast majority of species are socially monogamous, usually for one breeding season at a time, sometimes for years. Other species have breeding systems that are polygynous or, rarely, Birds produce offspring by laying eggs which are fertilised through sexual reproduction. They are usually laid in a nest and incubated by the parents, most birds have an extended period of parental care after hatching. Some birds, such as hens, lay eggs even when not fertilised, songbirds, parrots, and other species are popular as pets. Guano is harvested for use as a fertiliser, Birds prominently figure throughout human culture. About 120–130 species have become extinct due to human activity since the 17th century, human activity threatens about 1,200 bird species with extinction, though efforts are underway to protect them. Recreational birdwatching is an important part of the ecotourism industry, the first classification of birds was developed by Francis Willughby and John Ray in their 1676 volume Ornithologiae. Carl Linnaeus modified that work in 1758 to devise the taxonomic classification system currently in use, Birds are categorised as the biological class Aves in Linnaean taxonomy. Phylogenetic taxonomy places Aves in the dinosaur clade Theropoda, Aves and a sister group, the clade Crocodilia, contain the only living representatives of the reptile clade Archosauria

6.
Galliformes
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The name derives from gallus, Latin for cock or rooster. Common names are gamefowl or gamebirds, landfowl, gallinaceous birds, wildfowl or just fowl are also often used for the Galliformes, but usually these terms also refer to waterfowl, and occasionally to other commonly hunted birds. This group has about 290 species, one or more of which are found in every part of the worlds continents. They are rarer on islands, and in contrast to the closely related waterfowl, are absent from oceanic islands—unless introduced there by humans. Several species have been domesticated during their long and extensive relationships with humans and this order contains five families, Phasianidae, Odontophoridae, Numididae, Cracidae, and Megapodiidae. They are important as seed dispersers and predators in the ecosystems they inhabit, many gallinaceous species are skilled runners and escape predators by running rather than flying. Males of most species are more colorful than the females, males often have elaborate courtship behaviors that include strutting, fluffing of tail or head feathers, and vocal sounds. The living Galliformes were once divided into seven or more families, despite their distinctive appearance, grouse and turkeys probably do not warrant separation as families due to their recent origin from partridge- or pheasant-like birds. The turkeys became larger after their ancestors colonized temperate and subtropical North America, the ancestors of grouse, though, adapted to harsh climates and could thereby colonize subarctic regions. Consequently, the Phasianidae are expanded in current taxonomy to include the former Tetraonidae and Meleagrididae as subfamilies, the Anseriformes and the Galliformes together make up the Galloanserae. They are basal among the living birds, and normally follow the Paleognathae in modern bird classification systems. This was first proposed in the Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy and has been the one major change of that proposed scheme that was almost universally adopted. However, the Galliformes as they were traditionally delimited are called Gallomorphae in the Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy and this is not a natural group, however, but rather an erroneous result of the now-obsolete phenetic methodology employed in the Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy. Phenetic studies do not distinguish between plesiomorphic and apomorphic characters, which leads to basal lineages appearing as monophyletic groups, historically, the buttonquails, mesites and the hoatzin were placed in the Galliformes, too. The former are now known to be adapted to an inland lifestyle, whereas the mesites are probably closely related to pigeons. The relationships of the hoatzin are entirely obscure, and it is treated as a monotypic order Opisthocomiformes to signify this. The earliest galliform-like fossils hail from the Late Cretaceous, most notably those of Austinornis lentus and its partial left tarsometatarsus was found in the Austin Chalk near Fort McKinney, Texas, dating to about 85 million years ago. This bird was quite closely related to Galliformes, but whether it was a part of these or belongs elsewhere in the little-known galliform branch of Galloanserae is not clear

7.
Phasianidae
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The Phasianidae are a family of heavy, groundliving birds which includes pheasants, partridges, junglefowl, chickens, Old World quail, and peafowl. The family includes many of the most popular gamebirds, the family is a large one, and is occasionally broken up into two subfamilies, the Phasianinae, and the Perdicinae. Sometimes, additional families and birds are treated as part of this family, for example, the American Ornithologists Union includes Tetraonidae, Numididae, and Meleagrididae as subfamilies in Phasianidae. They range in weight from 43 g in the case of the quail to 6 kg in the case of the Indian peafowl. If turkeys are included, rather than classified as a separate family, then the considerably heavier wild turkey reaches a maximum weight of more than 17 kg. Length in this family can vary from 12.5 cm in the king quail up to 300 cm in green peafowl. There is generally sexual dimorphism in size, with males tending to be larger than females and they are generally plump, with broad relatively short wings and strong legs. Many have a spur on their legs, a feature shared only with guineafowl, the bill is short and generally strong, particularly in species that dig for food. Males of the species often have brightly coloured plumage as well as facial ornaments such as wattles or crests. Phasianidae is mostly an Old World family, with a distribution that includes most of Europe and Asia, all of Africa except the driest deserts and down into much of eastern Australia, meleagridinae are native to the New World, while Tetraoninae are circumpolar. The greatest diversity of species is in Southeast Asia and Africa, the Congo peacock is specific to the African Congo. The subfamily Perdicinae has a more widespread distribution. Within their range they occupy almost every habitat except for the boreal forests. The family is generally sedentary and resident, although some quails undertake long migrations, several species in the family have been widely introduced around the world, particularly pheasants which have been introduced to Europe, Australia and the Americas, specifically for hunting purposes. Captive populations of peacocks and chickens have also escaped and become feral, most species either specialise in feeding on plant matter or are predatory, although the chicks of most species are insectivorous. In addition to the variation in diet there is an amount of variation in breeding strategies among the Phasianidae. Compared to birds in general there is a number of species that do not engage in monogamy. Nesting usually occurs on the ground, only the tragopans nest higher up in stumps of bushes, nests can vary from mounds of vegetation to slight scrapes in the ground

8.
Perdicinae
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Perdicinae is a subfamily of birds in the pheasant family, Phasianidae, regrouping the partridges, Old World quails, and francolins. For example, some partridges are more affiliated to pheasants, whereas Old World quails. Perdicinae is a non-migratory Old World group and these are medium-sized birds, and are native to Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The subfamily includes the partridges, the snowcocks, the francolins, the spurfowl and the Old World quail

9.
Brian Houghton Hodgson
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Brian Houghton Hodgson was a pioneer naturalist and ethnologist working in India and Nepal where he was a British Resident. He described numerous species of birds and mammals from the Himalayas and he was a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism and wrote extensively on a range of topics relating to linguistics and religion. He was an opponent of the British proposal to introduce English as the medium of instruction in Indian schools. Hodgson was the second of seven children born at Lower Beech, Prestbury, Cheshire to Brian Hodgson and his father lost money in a bad bank investment and had to sell their home at Lower beech. A great-aunt married to Beilby Porteus, the bishop of London, helped them, hodgsons father worked as a warden of the Martello towers and in 1820 barrack-master at Canterbury. Brian studied at Macclesfield grammar school until 1814 and the two years at Richmond under the tutelage of Daniel Delafosse. He was nominated for the Bengal civil service by an East India Company director and he went to study at Haileybury and showed an aptitude for languages. An early influence was Thomas Malthus who was a family friend, at the end of his first term he obtained a prize for Bengali. He graduated from Haileybury with a gold medal, at the age of seventeen he travelled to India as a writer in the British East India Company. His talent for such as Sanskrit and especially Persian was to prove useful for his career. He was posted as Assistant Commissioner in the Kumaon region during 1819-20 reporting to George William Traill, ill health made him prefer to go back into the hills of Nepal. He took up position in 1824 as postmaster and later assistant resident in 1825, in January 1833 he became the British Resident at Kathmandu. He continued to suffer ill health and gave up meat. He studied the Nepalese people, producing a number of papers on their languages, literature, in 1853 he made a brief visit to England and Holland. He married Anne Scott in the British Embassy at the Hague, in 1870 he married Susan Townshend of Derry. In 1838 he was made Chevalier of the Légion dHonneur by the French government and he initially followed his predecessor in cooperating with Bhimsen Thapa, a minister, but later shifted allegiance to the young King Rajendra and sought to interact directly with the King. Hodgson later supported Bhimsens opponents Rana Jang Pande and Krishna Ram Mishra, in July 1837 King Rajendras infant son was found dead. Bhimsen was suspected and Hodgson recommended that he be held in custody, Hodgson then became sympathetic to the Brahmin family of the Poudyals who were rivals of the Mishras

10.
Genus
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A genus is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms in biology. In the hierarchy of classification, genus comes above species. In binomial nomenclature, the name forms the first part of the binomial species name for each species within the genus. Felis catus and Felis silvestris are two species within the genus Felis, Felis is a genus within the family Felidae. The composition of a genus is determined by a taxonomist, the standards for genus classification are not strictly codified, so different authorities often produce different classifications for genera. Moreover, genera should be composed of units of the same kind as other genera. The term comes from the Latin genus, a noun form cognate with gignere, linnaeus popularized its use in his 1753 Species Plantarum, but the French botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort is considered the founder of the modern concept of genera. The scientific name of a genus may be called the name or generic epithet. It plays a role in binomial nomenclature, the system of naming organisms. The rules for the names of organisms are laid down in the Nomenclature Codes. The standard way of scientifically describing species and other lower-ranked taxa is by binomial nomenclature, the generic name forms its first half. For example, the gray wolfs binomial name is Canis lupus, with Canis being the name shared by the wolfs close relatives. The specific name is written in lower-case and may be followed by names in zoology or a variety of infraspecific names in botany. Especially with these names, when the generic name is known from context. Because animals are typically only grouped within subspecies, it is written as a trinomen with a third name. Dog breeds, meanwhile, are not scientifically distinguished, there are several divisions of plant species and therefore their infraspecific names generally include contractions explaining the relation. For example, the genus Hibiscus includes hundreds of other species apart from the Rose of Sharon or common garden hibiscus, Rose of Sharon doesnt have subspecies but has cultivars that carry desired traits, such as the bright white H. syriaca Diana. Hawaiian hibiscus, meanwhile, includes several separate species, since not all botanists agree on the divisions or names between species, it is common to specify the source of the name using author abbreviations

11.
Quail
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Quail is a collective name for several genera of mid-sized birds generally placed in the order Galliformes. Old World quail are placed in the family Phasianidae, and New World quail are placed in the family Odontophoridae, the species of buttonquail are named for their superficial resemblance to quail, and form the family Turnicidae in the order Charadriiformes. The king quail, an Old World quail, often is sold in the pet trade, in 2007,40 million quail were produced in the U. S. The collective noun for a group of quail is a flock, covey or bevy

12.
Jungle bush quail
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The jungle bush quail is a species of quail found in Indian Subcontinent, ranging across India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Very different from the female, the jungle bush quail has a white moustache, heavily barred white underparts. The female has a uniform, rich chestnut breast and belly, however, both the male and the female have red and white streaks on the head. It is roughly 6. 3–7.2 in in length, the diet of the jungle bush quail consists mainly of seeds. Particularly of grasses, although it takes insects. The species is not globally threatened as it has an extensive range, the population in Sri Lanka has contracted since the 1950s, but is thought to be widespread and common elsewhere in the range. The jungle bush quail is largely sedentary, although the birds in Nepal are thought to migrate in winter

13.
Rock bush quail
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The rock bush quail is a species of quail found in parts of peninsular India. It is a species with a wide range and the IUCN has rated it as being of least concern. The rock bush quail is very similar to and overlaps in range with the jungle bush quail and these birds are found in small coveys and are often detected only when they suddenly burst out into flight en masse from under vegetation. It is 6. 7–7.25 in in length and weighs 2. 25–3 oz and it is some shade of brown barred and mottled with darker colour. A diagnostic feature is that the outermost primary feather is longer than the innermost, the voice is a trill followed by a series of piping notes which start quiet and grow louder. The rock bush quail is native to the half of India and is believed to be a non-migratory species. It occurs in areas with scrubby grassland and thorny bushes and is seldom found above about 600 metres. The rock bush quail has a wide range and is common in many parts of that range. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has rated its status as being of least concern. Although the population has not been quantified, it is declining slowly, as the bird is subject to hunting pressure. The rate of decline in population is insufficient to warrant listing the species in a threatened category

14.
Painted bush quail
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The painted bush quail is a species of quail found in the hill forests of India. They move in small coveys on hillsides and are distinguished by their red bills and they have a liquid alarm call and small groups will run in single file along paths before taking flight when flushed. This quail is darkish brightly colored with a red bill and legs. The female has brick-red underpart and lacks the throat and head stripe of the male. The male has a face with a white supercilium and throat. These quail are found in a covey of 6 to 10 birds. They come out in open grassy patches or on forest roads and cart tracks to feed, the covey quickly reunites by the constant call of the members to one another. The call consists of runs of soft whistle for rallying the scattered covey, the call is pleasant, oft-repeated triple note kirikee-kirikee-kirikee, by the cock in breeding season. It is 6. 6–7.5 in in length and weighs roughly 2. 4–3.1 oz This species is found in the hill forests. There are two disjunct populations. Subspecies blewitti is found in the Satpuras and extends into the northern Eastern Ghats and this is smaller and paler than the nominate subspecies of the Western Ghats, the Nilgiris and hills of southern India including the Biligirirangans and Shevaroys. These quails are usually seen in groups of 8 to 10. When flushed they scatter in different directions and then begin rally calling to reunite, males are believed to be monogynous. They are pugnacious and trappers are known to use decoy males to capture others, the call of the breeding male is a kirkee. kirkee and other calls include soft whistles which rises and falls in pitch. The nesting season varies locally, but is said to breed mainly in December to March, nests are typically found in the ground at the root of a bush or grass clump, sometimes thinly lined with grass. The female lays 4 to 7 eggs at a time, which are incubated by the female alone for 16–18 days before hatching, females are said to defend their young often by attacking dogs and even humans that intrude. Chicks are said to be able to fly at an early age

15.
Manipur bush quail
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The Manipur bush quail is a species of quail found in Northeast India, inhabiting damp grassland, particularly stands of tall grass, in West Bengal, Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, and Meghalaya. It was first collected and described by Allan Octavian Hume on an expedition to Manipur in 1881. P. manipurensis is listed as Endangered on the IUCNs Red List, as its habitat is small, fragmented, there was no confirmed sighting of the bird from 1932 until June 2006, when Anwaruddin Choudhury reported spotting the quail in Assam. BBC News quoted the director of the Wildlife Trust of India, Rahul Kaul, as saying. The species was considered by Frank Finn based on Captain Woods report of 1899 that the species was common in the past, wood noted that the bird was commonly trapped by Manipur people after bush fires and that the local name was lanz-soibol meaning trap quail

16.
Integrated Taxonomic Information System
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The Integrated Taxonomic Information System is an American partnership of federal agencies designed to provide consistent and reliable information on the taxonomy of biological species. The database draws from a community of taxonomic experts. Primary content staff are housed at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the primary focus of ITIS is North American species, but many groups are worldwide and ITIS continues to collaborate with other international agencies to increase its global coverage. ITIS provides a reference database of scientific and common names for species. As of May 2016, it contains over 839,000 scientific names, synonyms, and common names for terrestrial, marine, data presented in ITIS are considered public information, and may be freely distributed and copied, though appropriate citation is requested. ITIS is frequently used as the de facto source of data in biodiversity informatics projects. It presents the names in a classification that contains author, date, distributional. In addition, common names are available through ITIS in the official languages of the Americas. ITIS and its partner, Species 2000, cooperate to annually produce the Catalogue of Life. The Catalogue of Lifes goal was to complete the global checklist of 1.9 million species by 2011. As of May 2012, the Catalogue of Life has reached 1.4 million species—a major milestone in its quest to complete the first up-to-date comprehensive catalogue of all living organisms, ITIS and the Catalogue of Life are core to the Encyclopedia of Life initiative announced May 2007. EOL will be largely on various Creative Commons licenses. The newer material has been checked to higher standards of taxonomic credibility, biological taxonomy is not fixed, and opinions about the correct status of taxa at all levels, and their correct placement, are constantly revised as a result of new research. Many aspects of classification remain a matter of scientific judgment, the ITIS database is updated to take account of new research as it becomes available, and the information it yields is likely to represent a fair consensus of modern taxonomic opinion. Records within ITIS include information about how far it has been possible to check and its information should be checked against other sources where these are available, and against the primary research scientific literature where possible

Perdicula erythrorhyncha
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The painted bush quail is a species of quail found in the hill forests of India. They move in small coveys on hillsides and are distinguished by their red bills and they have a liquid alarm call and small groups will run in single file along paths before taking flight when flushed. This quail is darkish brightly colored with a red bill and legs. Th

1.
Painted bush quail

2.
Illustration of the nominate subspecies, the red legs and bill are diagnostic in the field

3.
Head of male

Taxonomy (biology)
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Taxonomy is the science of defining groups of biological organisms on the basis of shared characteristics and giving names to those groups. The exact definition of taxonomy varies from source to source, but the core of the remains, the conception, naming. There is some disagreement as to whether biological nomenclature is considered a part of taxon

1.
Title page of Systema Naturae, Leiden, 1735

2.
Evolution of the vertebrates at class level, width of spindles indicating number of families. Spindle diagrams are typical for Evolutionary taxonomy

3.
The same relationship, expressed as a cladogram typical for cladistics

4.
Type specimen for Nepenthes smilesii, a tropical pitcher plant.

Animal
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Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia. The animal kingdom emerged as a clade within Apoikozoa as the group to the choanoflagellates. Animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and independently at some point in their lives and their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some unde

1.
Carl Linnaeus, known as the father of modern taxonomy

2.
Had'n

3.
The use of love darts by the land snail Monachoides vicinus is a form of sexual selection

4.
A newt lung cell stained with fluorescent dyes undergoing the early anaphase stage of mitosis

Chordate
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Chordates are deuterostomes, as during the embryo development stage the anus forms before the mouth. They are also bilaterally symmetric coelomates, in the case of vertebrate chordates, the notochord is usually replaced by a vertebral column during development, and they may have body plans organized via segmentation. There are also additional extin

2.
Craniate: Hagfish

3.
Tunicates: sea squirts

4.
Cephalochordate: Lancelet

Bird
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Birds live worldwide and range in size from the 5 cm bee hummingbird to the 2.75 m ostrich. They rank as the class of tetrapods with the most living species, at ten thousand. As a subgroup of Reptilia, birds are the closest living relatives of crocodilians, while birds, the fossil record indicates that birds are also the last surviving representati

1.
Archaeopteryx lithographica is often considered the oldest known true bird.

3.
Confuciusornis sanctus, a Cretaceous bird from China

4.
The range of the house sparrow has expanded dramatically due to human activities.

Galliformes
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The name derives from gallus, Latin for cock or rooster. Common names are gamefowl or gamebirds, landfowl, gallinaceous birds, wildfowl or just fowl are also often used for the Galliformes, but usually these terms also refer to waterfowl, and occasionally to other commonly hunted birds. This group has about 290 species, one or more of which are fou

2.
Despite its distinct appearance, the wild turkey is actually a very close relative of pheasants

3.
Palaeortyx skeleton, Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, Paris

4.
Female (left) and male common pheasants: Sexual dimorphism is conspicuous in this species, one of the most apomorphic gamefowl

Phasianidae
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The Phasianidae are a family of heavy, groundliving birds which includes pheasants, partridges, junglefowl, chickens, Old World quail, and peafowl. The family includes many of the most popular gamebirds, the family is a large one, and is occasionally broken up into two subfamilies, the Phasianinae, and the Perdicinae. Sometimes, additional families

Perdicinae
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Perdicinae is a subfamily of birds in the pheasant family, Phasianidae, regrouping the partridges, Old World quails, and francolins. For example, some partridges are more affiliated to pheasants, whereas Old World quails. Perdicinae is a non-migratory Old World group and these are medium-sized birds, and are native to Europe, Asia, Africa, and the

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Perdicinae

Brian Houghton Hodgson
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Brian Houghton Hodgson was a pioneer naturalist and ethnologist working in India and Nepal where he was a British Resident. He described numerous species of birds and mammals from the Himalayas and he was a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism and wrote extensively on a range of topics relating to linguistics and religion. He was an opponent of the British

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Brian Houghton Hodgson.

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Aged 17

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The Residency, Hodgson's home in Nepal

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Bust of Hodgson at the Asiatic Society Museum in Calcutta by Thomas Thornycroft.

Genus
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A genus is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms in biology. In the hierarchy of classification, genus comes above species. In binomial nomenclature, the name forms the first part of the binomial species name for each species within the genus. Felis catus and Felis silvestris are two species within th

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Number of reptile genera with a given number of species. Most genera have only one or a few species but a few may have hundreds. Based on data from the Reptile Database (as of May 2015).

Quail
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Quail is a collective name for several genera of mid-sized birds generally placed in the order Galliformes. Old World quail are placed in the family Phasianidae, and New World quail are placed in the family Odontophoridae, the species of buttonquail are named for their superficial resemblance to quail, and form the family Turnicidae in the order Ch

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Quail

Jungle bush quail
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The jungle bush quail is a species of quail found in Indian Subcontinent, ranging across India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Very different from the female, the jungle bush quail has a white moustache, heavily barred white underparts. The female has a uniform, rich chestnut breast and belly, however, both the male and the female have red and whit

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Jungle bush quail

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Eggs, Collection Museum Wiesbaden

Rock bush quail
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The rock bush quail is a species of quail found in parts of peninsular India. It is a species with a wide range and the IUCN has rated it as being of least concern. The rock bush quail is very similar to and overlaps in range with the jungle bush quail and these birds are found in small coveys and are often detected only when they suddenly burst ou

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Rock bush quail

Painted bush quail
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The painted bush quail is a species of quail found in the hill forests of India. They move in small coveys on hillsides and are distinguished by their red bills and they have a liquid alarm call and small groups will run in single file along paths before taking flight when flushed. This quail is darkish brightly colored with a red bill and legs. Th

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Painted bush quail

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Illustration of the nominate subspecies, the red legs and bill are diagnostic in the field

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Head of male

Manipur bush quail
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The Manipur bush quail is a species of quail found in Northeast India, inhabiting damp grassland, particularly stands of tall grass, in West Bengal, Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, and Meghalaya. It was first collected and described by Allan Octavian Hume on an expedition to Manipur in 1881. P. manipurensis is listed as Endangered on the IUCNs Red List,

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Manipur bush quail

Integrated Taxonomic Information System
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The Integrated Taxonomic Information System is an American partnership of federal agencies designed to provide consistent and reliable information on the taxonomy of biological species. The database draws from a community of taxonomic experts. Primary content staff are housed at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the primary focus